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Building a Rhythm Snowman in Special Ed.

There is a wonderful resource called SingPlayCreate, who has many free and paid resources available for music teachers.  I have found that I can frequently adapt her resources for use with my kiddos, too, in more of a music therapy setting.  Today I'll share one such adapted activity.

She recently posted a free rhythm buiding activity.  It uses quarter and eighth notes, and includes a set of cards (I STRONGLY encourage you to go get a [free] membership so you can access her amazing resource library!).  She has great ideas for centers and individual work included--I just simplified a little for my students.


Using the included cards, first I:
*cropped and saved individual cards in Paint
*imported into my Smart Notebook
*projected on my Smart Board so students could manipulate them in view of the whole small group
*using only quarter note, or "beat" cards, I modeled how to create a four beat rhythm on the Smart Board
*students played the rhythm back to me on their drums
*we reviewed a repeat sign and repeated the rhythm four times on our drums
*slowly I introduced eighth note pairs, or "double" cards
* students took turns creating four beat rhythm patterns as an individual, which the class then repeated four times on their drums as a small group
*transferred to Orff instruments--first we played four "beats" on one bar
*then we played four "beats" on two bars (each mallet staying on one bar)
*then playing four "beats" with parallel movement (both mallets moving together to various bars)
*in my most advanced groups, we worked on alternating movement and added "doubles" into our rhythms on the xylophone
*finally, we created ABA form by playing the rhythm four times on our drum, four times on our xylophone (or improvising for 16 beats on our xylos), and four times on our drum again.

This was a lot of fun!  We had a fun review activity for our "beats" and "doubles," introduced Orff instruments for our next unit, and enjoyed building our snowmen and sharing them with each other.  We'll try some eight beat rhythms next time, and some of my groups may even venture into 3/4 territory with a fun Orff bass bordun.  Be sure to check out SingPlayCreate!



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